Guild Wars 2

Sup.

So, according to the title I bet many of you are assuming I might make a long winded post about various observations with concern to the WvW meta, or what has become the ‘next big thing’ in WvW. For those not informed, the meta is everything from ‘Hammer Trains’ to ‘Golem Rushes’…just the general perceived notions everyone acknowledges in WvW.

Right now, everyone can agree that there is an imbalance. Everything from Profession viability, common builds, from small scale to large scale fights, and so forth. There is just a lot of imbalance that goes on it is hard to put it all into one thread. So effectively your first assumption that my opening post would be long is correct. Luckily, I am a nice guy, so I know of a few ways to make you not want to read a wall of text. I will have TL;DRs or short summaries of my observations and solutions at the end of each segment. So commence cheering now.

Better yet, I will make this even simpler:

If you do not think the current WvW meta is imbalanced, feel free to skip most everything I have to say, and post why you think so! Terrific, I saved you time. Your welcome.

For those curious enough…here goes. I would get some chips, this is going to take a lot to digest.

WvW Meta Concept 1: Large Group Fights Versus Small Group Fights, Condition Damage versus Raw Damage

So I lumped two different conversations together because there is a large relationship between the two. Sweet.

So the current meta stands that at this point in time, ‘Hammer Trains’ have taken the large-group fights by storm. ….Yes there are some large groups that stack a lot of necromancers and elementalists to do incredible AoE and Well stacking but it seems a various amount of guilds that zerg-bust or plain out zerg abuse Guardian/Warrior stacking with the hammers. Oh the hammers, so many hammers. Hammers as a weapon set have an amazing amount of control and base damage (with a slow swing) on their own right, and control in a large group fight is pretty much the key to winning any engagement. You yourself might be skilled enough to see that front line rush you with leaps and smacks, to dodge effectively and avoid the impact. But over the context of just hammering into dozens of people, the hammer train quickly gains the ‘rally advantage’. (Rally Advantage is the tide of the battle where one side has a better state of getting rallies off the enemy. Where the other side just cannot quite finish people off, thus losing the fight overall. I won’t talk about Rally and its pros and cons here, I feel there are plenty of threads that dive into it.)

The power of the many hammers is also coupled with the innate tankiness of the classes abusing it, where they have enough utilities and just enough other professions to keep the train rolling. It’s not difficult to be able to run such a successful meta train, the problem lies in the fact there is not enough of a counter to handle such a thing. Some of the necro-stacking zerg-bust guilds made their comps around dealing with such trains, but the hammer train is too effective in large scale fights.

…Which is funny when you considering small scale. Fights where orange swords are not drawn, the inverse occurs. Normally in a large scale fight, the hammer trains or really any organized 20+ man guild equips itself with plenty of condition cleanse. Condition cleanse is extremely powerful in large zerg fights, and facilitates the need for running hammer trains to zerg bust with.

In small-scale combat though, there is not enough condition cleansing going on for the vast majority of fights. In duels or skirmishes, as the numbers fighting goes down, the demand of having an intense amount of conditions with survivability or the most extreme case of raw output to literally one-shot an enemy is high. ‘Middle-Man’ zerg-busting builds in Large-Scale combat pale in comparison, and often fail. We get unique roaming builds that absolutely dominate this end of WvW, and even some SPvP builds that have migrated over with similar if not greater stats than before.

In a way, one could make the argument that having conditions excel in small quarters combat while raw sustained damage and tankiness in large scale means that there is a balance going on. When you think about it carefully though, and I mean really think about it…there is no balance. Certain professions (…I might as well say Rangers as the main one) are completely screwed by this meta, and other professions excel at everything. This meta stymies growth, it needs to change.

Continued next Post

Thus, the following are the imbalances at this time:

- Many Damaging conditions are negated in large-scale combat thanks to high amounts of condition cleanse, encouraging the hammer train meta which is also quite strong (Emphasis on raw base damage and tankiness are high).
- Conditions are just about king in small-scale, with extreme raw damage with no tankiness to match as well. Tanky specs are hit or miss based on the situation.

Thanks to the above imbalances, WvW starts to become binary across many levels.

So what’s the solution?

Well, after some consideration I came up with some culprits. I can’t tell if you are going to hate me after this but…luckily you can discuss your disfavor for me after.

- Crit Damage is a problem.
- Group Condition Cleanse is a problem.

…How many of you are downvoting me? I can feel the bad vibes from here-

ANYWAYS, so I probably have you hating me right now, but let me explain. First, Crit Damage at this point in time is extremely strong. It is one thing if the defensive stats like Toughness or even Vitality could affect critical damage in some manner, but unlike Crit Damage, Toughness has a curve on its damage reduction. Crit damage only gets better at higher amounts whereas Toughness gets worse per point, this is why you see threads about toughness guardians going ‘WTF’ when they get bursted down by Berserker-strong Professions. This crit damage is also prevalent not just in small-scale but large scale as well, as an easy damage stat for the tanky hammer trains to get a hold of.

Sooooo….

Change Crit Damage to have diminishing returns.

At this point in time without any extra crit damage the base line for critical damage is at 150%. I do not want to do all the numbers at this point in time, but I imagine having the curve start bending at about 50% might be barely enough to reduce the overall damage of a zerg impact if stacking PVT. …Oh right traits, those should affect the curve as well. The numbers I am thinking about are about a 20% extra crit damage from a typical PVT Soldier Warrior with cava/berserker/valk trinkets. Plus whatever percent from traits. Looking anywhere from a 15-20% hit in the crit damage department for those pesky hammers.

Whereas for classes running full berserker would have a very hard time hitting 100% extra. Actually that might still be a bit too high, just because health pools for the majority of classes are really low. But that’s my personal opinion, there just needs to be some sort of nerf to put crit damage in line with every other stat.

Group condition cleanse makes the many instances of conditions being tossed out useless, a competent hammer train can ignore the vast majority of conditions. Between the rune sets and the group utilities, conditions really need help in large scale combat. But they are pretty kitten good in small-scale…hmmm…

Change some group condition cleanses to stronger self cleanses.

I do not want to completely diminish hammer trains, but I do want the playing field even for many more builds and possibilities. Between hitting crit damage and encouraging self-skill based condition cleanse in large scale fights WvWers will see a greater depth of skill from coordinating large scale fights since everyone will also have to deal with their own conditions themselves, and even favor bringing in different professions.

I think I did miss another key problem with stability, but considering the scale of change if these two solutions I came up with were to pass, the imbalance might be shifted enough so that rather than stability becoming a problem, it becomes just a benefit of running a hammer train in a stronger condition based WvW meta.

AND, encouraging stronger self-cleanses can help deal with the problematic dominance of conditions in the small-scale, though having an extra condition cured or something along those lines does not save you from having a lack of skill…

Message Body Lengths OP, read TL;DR down below.

Holy crap that was a lot, but TL;DR

- Hammer trains strong due to condition cleanse stacking and access to strong levels of crit damage on top of the strong control.
- Small Scale fights favor strong condition builds and extreme crit damage stacking. Survival is based upon skill and profession-based abilities.
- Giving Crit Damage a Curve, and making Group based Condition Cleanses more self-based would put all these issues at rest.
- Self-Based condition cleanse encourages more skill in Large Scale Fights and opens the door for more condition-stacking professions as opposed to pure rampart hammer trains.
- Crit Damage is taken advantage of across the board, creating a curve reduces the abundant strength of hammer trains while at the same time only giving power to those purely stacking crit damage to reach similar power levels they had before. Since self-condition cleanse is buffed as per my suggestion, crit damage stacking in small scale is not entirely nerfed to the ground and brought in line.

Holy crap I typed a lot. I don’t think I can continue at this time to talk about Siege. I think I gave you guys enough to bite on, go ahead!

Group condition cleanse is an obvious one. It’s sad it needs a 3 post thread just to say it.

Good news is, Mesmers are about to bust open more self/group condi cleansing next patch! On goes the meta!

Ross Biddle.2367:

Group condition cleanse is an obvious one. It’s sad it needs a 3 post thread just to say it.

Good news is, Mesmers are about to bust open more self/group condi cleansing next patch! On goes the meta!

Which does not help the large-scale.

If A-Net is focused on improving condition cleanse, there needs to be a compromise to help condition classes work better in zerg comps.

Another thought that crossed my mind was something rather interesting, but mechanically difficult to implement.

- Offer condition classes traits that grant a sort of cleanse immunity or resistance. Perhaps when the specific condition gets cleansed it loses stacks instead and not the whole condition.

As an example.

Ok… That was a lot, so I skimmed and hopefully got the gist of it.
Personally I haven’t really seen a lot of hammer trains, but I avoid the big fights so, I suppose that would be why.
Reducing the AoE cleanses would definitely solve some of the problem for Condi-builds, but it might also bring about a new meta of Necro’s and other heavy Condi professions (Not really familiar with what heavy condi means to most people, personally I was just happy solo stacking 25 bleeds with my ele). Which could be just as scary to people without solo cleanses. Plus giving groups the ability to opt for AoE cleanses allow groups/individual people within the groups to focus on dps rather than always having to watch their own survivability {older games where you have tanks and healers, tanks don’t have to stare at their health bar all the time} means you have more reliance on your group.
Now, ending the mindless zergs is a good thing. However only if it doesn’t kill the coordinated groups as well.
Tbh: I like my crit damage, and I would hate to see anything happen to it, however if it would help to cut down zergs and uncoordinated groups then I’ll take one for the team any day.

Dasenthal.6520:

Ok… That was a lot, so I skimmed and hopefully got the gist of it.
Personally I haven’t really seen a lot of hammer trains, but I avoid the big fights so, I suppose that would be why.
Reducing the AoE cleanses would definitely solve some of the problem for Condi-builds, but it might also bring about a new meta of Necro’s and other heavy Condi professions (Not really familiar with what heavy condi means to most people, personally I was just happy solo stacking 25 bleeds with my ele). Which could be just as scary to people without solo cleanses. Plus giving groups the ability to opt for AoE cleanses allow groups/individual people within the groups to focus on dps rather than always having to watch their own survivability {older games where you have tanks and healers, tanks don’t have to stare at their health bar all the time} means you have more reliance on your group.
Now, ending the mindless zergs is a good thing. However only if it doesn’t kill the coordinated groups as well.
Tbh: I like my crit damage, and I would hate to see anything happen to it, however if it would help to cut down zergs and uncoordinated groups then I’ll take one for the team any day.

I am not saying get rid of every single AoE cleanse, there is however a huge synergy coming out of hammer trains to literally ignore conditions on a huge scale. Getting nailed with every condition at once, normally would stop a person in their tracks. The current amount of AoE cleanse is rather breaking, so instead why not turn some of that AoE cleanse to increased Self-Cleanse?

It makes large-scale condition builds more viable and nerfs the very strong small-scale condition builds, who have to do a bit more to defeat other builds they normally would roflstomp.

Anything that promotes more damage and less tanky, healing, cleansing builds is good for the game. Right now, the game heavily favours stacking, armor, healing, and condition cleansing. IMO, it just leads to long boring drawn out battles where it’s absolutely essential to travel in large zergs.

This is what Anet should do: Cut the effectiveness of toughness in half, cut healing in half and double all cool-downs, double all cool-downs on condition cleanses and make AoE condition cleanse elite skills with a horrible cool down.

Now that should make fights just a tad more interesting.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Anything that promotes more damage and less tanky, healing, cleansing builds is good for the game. Right now, the game heavily favours stacking, armor, healing, and condition cleansing. IMO, it just leads to long boring drawn out battles where it’s absolutely essential to travel in large zergs.

This is what Anet should do: Cut the effectiveness of toughness in half, cut healing in half and double all cool-downs, double all cool-downs on condition cleanses and make AoE condition cleanse elite skills with a horrible cool down.

Now that should make fights just a tad more interesting.

I think it would break the game even more, as coordinated guild groups would not be capable of zerg-busting if they aren’t tough enough or able to heal up during the long uphill battle. Ultimately making each fight decided more conclusively by who has the larger number (if that was not hard enough already).

Toughness is fine, healing can be debatable since it’s counter is limited to a few professions. Really the only thing that is breaking is how easily condition cleansing causes so many other issues. Without as much condition cleansing things like Poison and Confusion would hit large groups much more easily. We would see an entirely different sort of battlefield, and not one resolved in seconds as lop-sided as a veteren thief preying on an unsuspecting uplevel engineer.

By large scale condi, you mean necros? Because there isn’t another class who can actually do it large scale with more than 1 condi. I’ll pass. Take away aoe cleanse and you have everyone running melandru and -% condi food. Which makes condi pointless again.

Wait for edge of the mists. I think wvw is going to get less blob centric and you may see a shift into more condi specs.

To make condi stronger in larger groups, you will make them stronger in smaller groups, were they are already powerful. It is a crap shoot of a balance act. I dont think it can be done tbh.

The meta isn’t imbalanced because everyone is capable of doing the exact same things.

Which is the definition of balanced.

What you are talking about is level of fun. Is the meta fun?

Very good thread I agree with pretty much everything you have to say.

Generally the game classes are unbalanced, but some other aspect of skills have the opposite problem, they have been too much normalized. Just thinking about the AoE nerf for example which makes inevitable the Stacking.

Why would a class who’s specialty is AoE dmg, that has smaller damage per skill and less health be limited to the same amount of AoE targets as the other class? This is the result of overbalancing and leveraging. Makes the game flat and without contrast, thus encouraging people to run only the meta builds which are a guaranteed “win” scenario.

The fact that conditions are considered op and at the same time useless leads me to be leave they lay some where near the middle thus close to balanced.

the only thing I wish was any ability that sends conditions to a target would use the condition damage of the original caster and not treat it as a new cast. Being a non condition build and sensing back what was a dangerous condition on me and have it tickle the person I send it to makes the ability a little lack luster.

Omnitek.3876:

By large scale condi, you mean necros? Because there isn’t another class who can actually do it large scale with more than 1 condi. I’ll pass. Take away aoe cleanse and you have everyone running melandru and -% condi food. Which makes condi pointless again.

Wait for edge of the mists. I think wvw is going to get less blob centric and you may see a shift into more condi specs.

To make condi stronger in larger groups, you will make them stronger in smaller groups, were they are already powerful. It is a crap shoot of a balance act. I dont think it can be done tbh.

Necros are definitely the biggest ones to gain from this kind of change, but I would also take a gander that the other classes with a specific condition like Thieves with Poison and Mesmers with Confusion will see their conditions actually function better than now. Melandru is a likely scenario to call forth, but once you start shuffling around runes, everything starts changing. And food buffs are even more volatile, since there is condition duration increase foods among other kinds…

Edges of the Mists I feel you might be giving too much credit for. Although I think it might appeal especially to top coverage servers with insane stacking, I see it as a gimmick borderland that specifically does not help the PPT at all. It might be good for a month or so, but servers who cannot queue up their maps will have no reason not to try to go for PPT and blob up a map anyways.

Conditions are not seen in large groups simply because there is so much condition cleansing from other sources. Only when condition cleansing is weakened can the true power of conditions be seen on the large scale fights. If certain conditions are breaking on both large and small scale fights, then it might be time to see such conditions nerfed on a numerical level. Personally, as long as self-condition cleanse is increased a bit, small-scale conditions can be pretty much balanced. There just is not enough condition cleanse on a single person to deal with the reapplication of the same condition over and over again.

Would you kids quit over using the word Meta, I mean it is getting old already.

Don’t force me to start using terms like “awesome dude”, or “radical”, or “gag me with a spoon”…. :P

Draygo.9473:

The meta isn’t imbalanced because everyone is capable of doing the exact same things.

Which is the definition of balanced.

What you are talking about is level of fun. Is the meta fun?

Hmm.

You got a point, indeed I am probably projecting that I consider the meta ‘unfun’.

I have seen the meta of many different games, and at the very latest the meta changes every few months or so due to a new mechanic.

Ironically, GW2 has had new things come into WvW like Torment and new runes, but the meta really has not changed at all. Things have slightly deviated, but not in a good enough way.

I do not want the prevailing thought of ‘Orange Swords at NE camp’ followed by an inquiry of numbers and tag, knowing full well that if the number of the same tag is 25+, there is a high chance they are running a hammer train. Why not more questions, like ‘Oh its <so-so>? Hmm, they running glassy or tank heavy, who do we got to send over there?’.

I would love to hear about a server’s newest strong guild being a zerg-busting condition with an engineer front-line. I would love to hear about some amazing new strat involving a five-man of thieves creating poison fields on 50+ people while a 20 man runs them over while they can’t heal.

I think there is a lot of potential…this condition cleanse issue needs to be addressed.

Large group used to be heavy condi based. It shifted away when they nerfed confusion, it will shift back soon enough.

Also, you give ppt too much credit. We play for fights. Sometimes hitting a tower is required to get a fight. PPT is about coverage, not skill. You will see a bunch of organized guilds shift over to Mists and not look back and others do a 50/50 split.

I think a major part of the problem is the AoE stability

this works to counter breaking up a melee train with fears, pulls stuns and knockbacks while the aoe condi cleanses remove the cripples and slows which would further thin out the train making it more vulnerable

if a melee group can be broken apart the melee train will fail

I have no problem with stability itself but it should be a solo ability to be used when being focus and not a part of sop of melee trains, if they want to keep aoe stability then more classes need aoe buff removal not just necros and mesmers

and this would then make people use the less commonly used stun breaking abilities rather than relying on the group cleanses and stability while they swing that hammer

breaking up the melee train also has the side effect of reducing the effect of power crit builds as targets are not grouped up as much so they may not be always hitting that 5 person aoe limit

now an organised group who all have stability builds and cc will be able to smash apart the more vulnerable zergs who relied upon the aoe stability to stay as a group rather than co-ordination and teamwork

It’s open world combat PvE with objectives, it shouldn’t be balanced.

Make melee autoattack single Target i say

So I have done some talking with a few friends, who contrary to what I have spoken about, have said that it is rather difficult to run a Hammer Train in the higher coverage servers than what I have first said. Of course their definition of a hammer train is deviated from mine.

So I have to ask:

- Specifically to let’s say the top 10 servers, do you see the abundant trains as much as I say, or do you actually see more necros and AoE stacking conditions?
- What do you consider a hammer train, 90%-95% hammer to a 5%-10% backline? 75%-85% hammer to 15%-25% backline? Is there a real difference?

Just some inquiries I wish to post.